Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work. Wolfer, 1904

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work. Wolfer, 1904:

Mid Week At Work. Wolfer, 1904

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, September 23, 1923. The Call of the Wild.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, September 23, 1923. The Call of the Wild.: 

Sunday, September 23, 1923. The Call of the Wild.

The first version of The Call of the Wild was released.

Comparison and Constrast. Mourning Dove, left. Eurasian Collared Dove, right.

 

The pause that refreshes.

The The pause that refreshes.

Lex Anteinternet: Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fishing and gardening

Lex Anteinternet: Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fish...: 

Rediscovering the obvious: Diet and hunting, fishing and gardening

For those who follow dietary trends, the current in vogue diet is the "Paley\o Diet".  And for those who take the National Geographic, you are aware that they've been running a semi scary series of articles on food in the 21st Century.

Elk hunter in northwest Wyoming, first decade of the 20th Century. For many in this region, this scene could have been taken any October.

The National Geographic articles have been inspired by the scare that's existed since at least the early 1970s that the planet is about to run out of food, although that particular article isn't really on that topic.  Quite frankly, and as well explored by an earlier National Geographic article, there's small chance of this indeed.  If anything, production agriculture has so vastly increased the global food supply that there's an overabundance of food and most fears of this type are very poorly placed.  Production agriculture, in fact, has hardly touched Africa and there's vast potential there, although not without vast cultural cost at the same time.

That's not what this article addresses, however. Rather, it addresses something that has been so obvious to me for decades that it not fits into one of those "geez, I wish I'd thought of marketing that way back when. . . " categories.

That is, human beings are evolved to eat a diet that we ate in our aboriginal state, for the most part, which we could still largely do.  Failing to do so has all sorts of negative health impacts.

Now, I am very well aware that this idea, which is an obvious truth, runs counter to the whole peak of the vegan trend, but that entire trend is one that is basically neopaganistic and hateful of nature.  We are part of nature, are evolved to eat a natural diet, and that diet was a wild one.

 Deer hunters with camp, early 20th Century.

So, hence the paleo diet trend, which I've largely ignored  A better study of this was presented by the National Geographic.

And what did the National Geographic discover? Well, people in their native states are hunter gatherers, with the emphasis on hunters. They eat a lot of vegetative material, but mostly because they're left with little choice.  When they don't have meat, it's because they can't find it, and they crave it.  If meat is abundant, their diet is heavy in it.  If it isn't, they feel deprived and make do with what they can find.

 Don't have the time, or perhaps energy to pursue deer or elk, or whatever.  Well, poultry lovers, perhaps you should try something a little more wild. Women hunters with pheasants.  Pheasant taste better than chicken any day.  For those who worry, moreover, about mass poultry production and how chickens are killed and raised, these pheasants enjoyed a wild bird life and generally when they're culled, they go from that to processed, so to speak, instantly.

And, as we now are increasing learning (and which I've known for decades) a natural diet of that type, with what you could locally hunt, is the best thing for you.

Now, as folks around here know I'm a fan of agriculture, and indeed I own beef cattle (although I'd live off of deer, elk and antelope if my wife, who is more of a beef fan, would allow).  And agriculture does have a peculiar role here.  

 Female pheasant hunter, 1960s, Colorado.

Agriculture is, or can be, the enemy of the wild in that it's allowed, as has long been known, civilization to rise.  Only the production of surplus foods can sustain urban development and our type of civilization, even though farmers and ranchers are often shunned by the people who depend upon them 100% in cities.  This has long been known, and some cultural anthropologist in fact make a big deal out of it and sort of smugly argue that all production agriculture is the enemy of the wild.

But in fact, as the National Geographic explores, agriculture can exist and does exist in a blurry line with hunting and gathering in those societies.  Nearly all, but not all, hunter gather societies are actually small farm, hunting, and gathering societies.  That's been obvious for millennia, but is generally ignored.

 Rabbit hunter, early 20th Century.  Rabbit taste nearly identical to chicken, and is the leanest meat on the planet.  It's so lean, in fact, you can't survive on a diet of it alone.  In many nations, domestic rabbit is a common table item.  It oddly isn't in the U.S., but there's no good reason for that. Wild rabbit taste like chicken and can be used anywhere chicken is.

Okay, so what's all this have to do with diet?

Just this.  While it puts me in the category of food campaigners, a wild diet is the best diet, and some direct relationship with your food is vastly superior to none.  People who sit around extolling vegetarianism or veganism are largely allowed to do that on the backs of farmers who are supporting their pagainistic anti natural dietary beliefs.  People who have a direct relationship with consumption and understand it (the two not necessarily being the same) tend to feel differently.

 Trout fishing in the Catskills.  Fishing is really fish hunting, and I've always thought that people who try to make a distinction between hunting and fishing are fooling themselves.  For that matter, anyone who eats fish, poultry or meat and doesn't think that they'd personally hunt or fish is really fooling themselves anyhow.  While on this, I'll also note that I truly find the modern emphasis on "catch and release" a bit bizarre.

Even now, in the 21st Century, many of us could have that direct relationship.  Most urbanites have the room to plant a garden (and yes, I've done so in the past but haven't the past several years, so I'm being a bit hypocritical).  And hunting is on the rise in the United States.  Taking some of your food in the field, either by hunting or fishing, is to be encouraged, and not only has the benefit of giving you a diet that somewhat replicates the one you are evolved to actually eat, but it gives you a lot of exercise as well.  Indeed, something non hunters don't appreciate is that the actual work in hunting involved can be quite intensive, and usually really dedicated hunters in the west try to stay in shape for that reason.  For those who can't do that, a direct relationship with your beef supplier, or pork supplier, or poultry supplier, is nearly always possible.  The cow in our freezer has always been the trendy "grass fed" beef just because of that sort of, but of course it's one of our own that's a "volunteer" having determined to retire from calf raising.

 World War One vintage poster campaigning for War Gardens, which the U.S. encouraged to be planted in towns and cities.

 World War Two photograph of a Victory Garden being planted.  This fellow had such a big yard (its in a town) that he's acquired a tractor to do it.

 School Gardens probably passed away about the time this poster was made during World War One, but there's plenty of space in most urban areas for yard gardening.

There's no down side to any of this, and we can only hope that this trend continues in the future, with more hunting, gathering and planting, on their own.  Shoot, most urban areas are so darned boring in real terms, the benefits can hardly cease.

Deer hunter bringing in a deer on skies. The uninitiated will think, "oh surely, that's the far distant past". Well, not always.  I haven't hunted deer on skies, but I have hunted snowshoe hares on skies many times.

Lex Anteinternet: Today is a poor day for Outdoor Fitness

From 2014:

Lex Anteinternet: Today is a poor day for Outdoor Fitness: 

Today is a poor day for Outdoor Fitness

Or so says my AccuWeather App.

Ice Fishing tent, yesterday.

Well it is really cold, that's for sure.  About 6F and likely to stay that way all day long.  And that's cold enough you have to be really careful outdoors.

But that doesn't mean some folks don't go out.  I guess it depends on how ancient and primal your idea of "outdoor fitness" is.

Blog Mirror: 20+ Ground Venison Recipes for Every Meal

 

20+ Ground Venison Recipes for Every Meal

Lex Anteinternet: The ignorance of vegetarians

Lex Anteinternet: The ignorance of vegetarians:           

The ignorance of vegetarians

 
One of the real negative impacts, indeed dangers, in the increasing urbanization of the Western World's population is that it has given rise to a sanctimonious myths based on wholesale ignorance of food production and nature.  One of the biggest of these is that it's "green" or "kind" to be a vegetarian, or beyond that a "vegan".

In actuality, the opposite is quite true.  If a person really wanted to be kind to the planet, and still eat, what they'd be is a hunter,  not a vegetarian, and certainly not a vegan.  Or they'd hunt, gather, and plant a little garden. That's about as green as you can get.

The basis for the vegan myth is apparently a view that vegetable farming is kind to the land, and that by being a vegetarian you are not responsible for the deaths of any animals. 

Taking the latter part of that first, that's far, far, from the truth.  In fact, all farmers kill animals, and all farming kills animals.  It is not possible to be a farmer without killing something, even by accident.  Tractors combine through snakes, birds and deer, just to give one example.  Vermin are killed by necessity, sometimes through the agents of another animals.  And things get killed hauling things to and fro.  Indeed, while I don't know for certain, I'd wager that farmers, kill far, far, far more animals than hunters do every year.  No farmer, of any kind, doesn't kill something, and probably a fair number of somethings.

Eat your whole natural wheat bagel and imagine otherwise, but there's some dead deer DNA in there somewhere.  Probably some dead rabbit dna, some mice dna, and a few bird dnas as well.

Nor is farming environmentally benign.  Some farming improves the land, some does the opposite, but it is not possible to raise a crop without altering it.  One of the prime alterations is that the surface of the land isn't what it once was, so whatever animal once lived there probably doesn't the same way.  Farming increases forage for some things, and decreases it for others, but it doesn't leave things in a state of nature.

Now, I'm not dissing farmers by mentioning this, they know it.  It's the ignorant self satisfied person eating a bowl of all natural oats that I'm laughing at?  Natural?  Was it wild and picked up by a gatherer?  No.  Did something die to get it to you.  Undoubtedly yes.  It is natural in that man is a natural farmer, but it also wasn't raised fee of any animal deaths, and if it was grown by somebody you didn't see grow it, fossil fuels were used to get it and produce it.

Of all farming, I'd note, it's animal farming, ie., ranching, that has the smallest environmental impact, as all it does is put large animals out where there were otherwise large animals.  They probably aren't the same, to be sure, but there's no plowing or reaping involved.  There may be haying, but that's relatively benign, but not purely so, as well.

Again, I'm not criticizing farmers and ranchers, and I am one.  But I am amazed by the extent to which certain people think they're morally superior because they don't eat meat.  They actually do eat meat, they just don't realize it's in there. And they're causing greater acreage per man to be tilled to feed them personally.  They don't know that, as they're ignorant.  And they're ignorant, as their exposure to the real world is lacking.

Dove Opener

Rhodie camo.  Politically incorrect, but effective.

The dog found a turkey carcass.

Two doves, with lots of shooting.

Alaska crab fisheries will be closed this season.

 They were partially closed last year.

Blog Mirror: Scientists finally know why Germany’s wild boar are surprisingly radioactive

 

Scientists finally know why Germany’s wild boar are surprisingly radioactive

Fishing season is over, and hunting season has begun.

I am, by vocation, a hunter.  A hunter of wildlife and fish.  And I'm not exaggerating.

This isn't a hobby with me.  I'm stuck in a feral past, or perhaps a more feral future, but lving in the present.  

And I'm more of a hunter than a fisherman, in contrast with my father, who was the other way around

The first two seasons of the year open on September 1.  Like most years, due to my occupation (which most people, at least who are professionals, would claim as their vocation, although I'd wager that it is with less than half, very conservatively), I worked.  Opening weekend for me, therefore, is usually when I first get out, and I first get out for the greatest of the wild grouse, Blue Grouse.

They are, I'd note, delicious.

This is a somewhat complicated story, but because of the route I take in, I need permission to cross, which is always forthcoming but I didn't hear back in time this year. That meant that I needed to drive into a location a good two miles further from my normal jumping off point.

And the road, due to the heavy rains this year, and the winter snow, was eroded to impassable. So the walk was further than expected.

But still very pretty, in the morning light.

Because of the very long hike, and my recent surgery, I armed myself with a kids model 20 gauge and buttoned my shirt up to my neck.  Because my old M1911 campaign hat was a casualty of a rattlesnake event two years ago, I wore a replacement United States Park Service campaign hat.  I don't like it nearly as much as my old M1911.

I will say that those wearing synthetic hats are, well, missing the point, and the boat.

The entire trip involves some mountain climbing for the dog.

The dog won't eat in the morning (poodles and doodles are strange about this) due to excitement, so I packed his uneaten breakfast with me. When we hit the high country, he was by that time hungry, in spite of his excitement.

Those boots?  White's smoke jumpers.  Best boots ever.

We hike a fair amount. The dog drank out of a few streams, but I also carry a canteen and he's learned to drink out of a canteen cup.

We found and bagged two young grouse.

And ate them one that evening.  I fried both, that night, and had the second one, reheated the second evening.
 

Give a student a hand: Coyote - Badger Relationship Project

Give her a hand:

Coyote - Badger Relationship Project